Sunshine beamed through the living room windows in the morning. The way it should be. I went to a patisserie and chomped on a chocolate croissant as I made my way back to my apartment, casting flippant greetings to the peds I passed, mumbling the words with crumbs falling out my mouth and chocolate on my lips.

When I returned to my apartment, I indexed for a couple of hours before eating an early lunch. The sun was shining so brightly that I couldn’t think. I had to go outside. I put on a light jacket and grabbed my sunglasses. I thought about what I wanted to do as I walked out the door and down the steps. The weather was perfect. Anything was possible on a day like this.

I rode my bike to the Oude Zijde, found a Harry Potter street, and walked into Conscious Dreams. I purchased a dose of shrooms and a bottle of juice. I left, ate the shrooms, and put the juice into the bottle holder on my bike then weaved through the Oude Zijde across the Oudeschans, past Waterlooplein, down Plantage Middenlaan, and waved at Eik en Linde. I hadn’t been there for some time, but the outdoors insisted today was not the day. Middenlaan continued past the Natura Artis Magistra and on to Oosterpark. The park called to me, the day being what it was, but I rode to the north on Mauritskade. The path along the wide street was so smooth I felt like I was gliding. The bike lanes in Amsterdam were magic. They were my destination.

As I rode by the Eastern Docklands, I thought briefly of visiting Java Eiland. That had been a great day, and I had thought then that the experience would be even better while shrooming. At the last minute, though, I decided to keep going east. I was entering territory I had never seen. This was a day for exploring new frontiers. I passed Veelan, the last good street to cross toward Java, and slowed my pace to view the scene. On the surface there was nothing spectacular about the area, not compared to the city center anyway, yet the neighborhood was attractive. Every area of the city I had traversed seemed livable. Life in the Grachtengordel was convenient, but every place I had biked was accessible to the inner hub. This area felt “near-urban,” though a better description might have been “relaxed urban.” I saw a street sign and noted that I was riding along Zeeburgerdijk. It might be good to remember if I returned the same way.

I saw very few shops of any kind. All residential—houses, apartments, and condos. This differed a bit from Auriana’s neighborhood. Her street was strictly residential, but the streets around had more shopping. I remembered I would be seeing Auriana and Eliene Saturday night. The thought made me laugh. Warm as it was, the wind felt feathery.

I continued laughing, but I needed to find a small market, grocery store, or café to get more liquids. I remembered I had juice so I stopped, causing a cyclist behind me to yell at me in Dutch. I had no idea what he said, but I moved to the side of the bike lane so I could take a drink. The liquid on my tongue and down my throat … nectar. I turned into a sugar stick. I licked my lips and felt a rush of energy. Back on the bike, hauling ass.

I had finished off the juice and now the sugary aftertaste was turning my tongue into cement. A market would be ideal. Water, I needed water. I wished I had brought my day bag, but for an entirely unknown reason I started laughing. Every thought about potential difficulties tickled me. Trouble was ridiculous so I let go and laughed at everything around me. I had to stop and pull over to the side of the bike path. My face felt hot, deep red.

I stopped and bolted upright. What had I been doing? I couldn’t remember. Then I did. “Oh, yeah. I was laughing.” I mounted my bike in a matter-of-fact fashion and proceeded to pedal away. I saw a cyclist ahead of me, the same guy. I hadn’t seen him pass me. He occasionally looked back at me. I waved and he smiled. The buildings on either side of the street grabbed my attention and made me forget about him. Instead of the two-, three-, and four-story buildings, now they were eight stories, no longer gray or beige, but bright red or all glass. The designs were different as well. Impossible.

Could architecture change so quickly throughout a city? Oh, yeah, I was in Amsterdam. Everything changed every few blocks. How horrible if all the buildings had been designed the same. How could anyone change thinking patterns if everything stayed the same all the time? Architectural diversity was essential for escaping myopic thought. It was as true while shrooming as it was when not.

As the road curved, the trees got bigger along with the buildings. The space between the tall buildings was expansive as well. Picnics and Frisbees would have completed the vibe. I turned east to ride a path along a canal. The trees proliferated and the buildings disappeared. The road was four lane, but not terribly busy. Still, the sounds were angry. Strangely, there was a long gradual rise on this road. I changed gears—which I hadn’t done for weeks—and passed a couple cyclists. I was in a race now. I could see the structure of a bridge far up ahead. I cycled hard uphill and noticed a parking lot to my right. There was a building with a large sign that read “Flevopark.” There was no way to get to the park from the road, raised above it as the path was.

Was I on a ramp? What? That made no sense, but less and less did. I focused on pedaling again. The rise became steeper and when the trees thinned on either side of the road, I noticed I was at least thirty feet above the grounds of the park to the south. When I finally crossed the bridge the drop to the water was tens of thousands of feet. I could see all the way to the Himalayas; I was eye level with the peak of Mount Everest.

There was a bike path leading down. I wanted off this road in the clouds to roam around the flats again. I turned to the south and dropped down, pretty close to sea level. It didn’t take as long as I thought it would. I saw water up ahead, a much bigger waterway, and I realized I might be on an island. As I rode along the path the brush on the left side became thicker and taller. On the right was the waterway. A long boat that appeared to be a barge was rolling along at a slow pace. There was ugliness in every direction. What godawful monster had designed this area? The brush between the waterway and the road was unruly. I hadn’t seen such an ugly stretch of land since leaving the United States. Someone had made a grave mistake. How could a delightful country like The Netherlands fail to be visually pleasing everywhere.

A major disappointment. I was downright repulsed by the aesthetic. My thirst made the situation worse … or the ugliness made me thirsty. Chicken or egg. Anxiety welled so I stopped for a couple puffs from my dugout. That relaxed me. I smoked a cigarette, but that made the thirst that much worse. Fuck. It had seemed like such a good idea. Now my lips felt dry and cracked. All of my sensations were heightened while standing still. My mouth had filled with volcanic ash so I got back on the seat and pedaled forward, hoping this stretch would lead to a market or cafe—and more attractive scenery.

Finding a watering hole seemed unlikely, though, given my surroundings. The color of the water in the canal made me want to retch. It had been miles since I had seen a café or market of any kind. How could that be? I may not have been in Amsterdam any longer. I remembered that I thought I might be on an island and that cheered me up. Then I passed an ugly building surrounded by what appeared to be a junkyard of boats. I had somehow ridden into a Missouri backwater. I shook my head in disgust and kept going.

There were quite a few cars parked on the left-hand side of the road as I came upon a batch of downtrodden buildings and unkempt grounds. There appeared to be a marina in the distance, but the boats looked rundown. This was apparently the Isle of Misfortune. Of all the places to be while shrooming. No water, ugly environment, rundown cars parked on the side of the road, and thickets of unsightly brush. I had a few worries about being kidnapped by river people who would make me squeal like a pig.

The brush finally broke on my left revealing a wide waterway. Straight ahead in the distance was a bridge that crossed it onto another stretch of land. It was too far to make out what was on the other side of the waterway, presumably another island—if I was even on an island; maybe a peninsula—but the prospects did not look promising. Tall brush, no trees, no buildings.

I focused on making it to the bridge. I couldn’t see it, but on the other side there was a golden city with a market filled floor to ceiling with glistening bottles of cold water. Oddly enough, as I neared the bridge I passed by a magnificent house right on the road. Nothing else around, just ugly brush and a few trees. Who plopped that down in this spot? I took it as a sign. Now I knew there was an Island of Goodness across the bridge.

I rode under the bridge. To my chagrin, there was no ramp so I had to continue onward. The waterway was wider and much more attractive, though. I saw numerous buildings on the Island of Goodness and, hope of all hopes, another bridge in the distance. It seemed to recede as I approached. I had to get there. I had come so far and passed through such bleakness. Surely the bridge couldn’t move south faster than I was pedaling. No, it couldn’t. I felt relieved with this realization and, though I wasn’t sure I was right, I chose to believe I was. I also knew there would be a place to whet my whistle on the other side of the bridge.

As I curved around a corner, I realized the bridge was on the other side of the waterway, connecting two stretches of land far away from me. How did I see that as a bridge I could cross? It had been a mirage. Clearly the desert in my throat had tricked me into believing it was my bridge to freedom. I wasn’t seeing things as they were. When I saw what looked like a pedestrian bridge fifty feet ahead of me, I doubted its existence. It wasn’t until I turned onto it and rode across that I believed it was there.

Finally, I was on the Island of Goodness. As I disembarked from the bridge, I realized I had been wrong. This wasn’t the Island of Goodness; this was the Island of Greatness! Holy avante garde architecture! The condos and houses were more unusual and spectacular than those on Java. The shock of transitioning from butt-ugliness to exotic contemporary design disoriented me. Sensory overload. Triangle windows, barnyard shaped buildings, Jenga building-block constructions, dungeon doors with huge knockers, prison-slit windows, houses that were two-story, four-story, an entirely white building with no windows, a four-story bright yellow house with a 12 x 12 cutout exposing windows on the third and fourth floors, a condo with metal siding and diamond windows, a house with New England wind-beaten wood, trees on rooftops, red, blue, graphite, granite, brick, peach, and gray buildings, walkways cutting underneath second floors, and more, far too much to fully register, a smorgasbord of visual stimulation.

What I didn’t see was a café or market of any kind. I passed side street after side street, looked both ways, and saw nothing. To fully appreciate what I was seeing, I needed sustenance. Water, yes, but probably food, too. I knew I needed to eat or else I would pay a price.

The other strange thing was that there were no cars or scooters driving around. There were parked cars aplenty, but no other movement on the street. I saw two people walking together, but I wasn’t sure they were real. They could have been holograms. The place was a ghost town as far as I could tell. It was mid-afternoon, sure, and people were undoubtedly working. I had the Island of Greatness all to myself. Still, it was a Friday afternoon. Odd, and because I was thirsty, disheartening. Just as I was about to give up hope for sustenance, an upscale market appeared on the right-hand side of the street. Outside along either side of the door was a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables. I didn’t care about the vegetables, but there were fruits of every color: melons, oranges, apples, pomegranates, pears, and more.

I grabbed an apple and an orange then went inside and found a cooler. I grabbed a two-liter bottle of water and went to the checkout to pay. It wasn’t until I was face-to-face with the smiling young man at the computerized cash register that I realized just how hard I was tripping. I put the goods down and fumbled for my wallet. He said something to me in Dutch which sounded very much like, “Have you sniffed my very blue bottom?” Disturbed, I shook my head no, and a perplexed look crossed his face. I was still trying to figure out how to pull my wallet out of my coat pocket. I had managed to unzip it at least, but I couldn’t understand how a thin square could fit through what seemed to be a two-dimensional slit.

Even while distracted by this physical difficulty, I was able to listen to the strange fellow as he asked me with some concern if I had bothered to mate with a pelican before diving into a manhole. Somehow his question transformed the two-dimensional slit into the third dimension, and I was able to remove the wallet. Opening it was easy, but I forgot why I wanted it. As I stared at it with intense confusion, I heard the blonde madman ask me another question: “Is your fresh dandy jingling eerily? I can fathom killing walnuts for sport.” On the surface, his words seemed strange, but something about his tone of voice reminded me that he needed payment. I grabbed a bill and handed it to him. He looked at it then looked up at me then back down at the bill. He shook his head and handed it back to me, saying, “Two beads don’t make a sheet.” Ah, of course. It was a fiver. I put it away and handed him a much larger note. He smiled and nodded his head with satisfaction. He handed me a few bills of uncertain denomination as well as a few coins in return. I said, “Bedankt,” and as I was walking out, he replied, “Gut a fellow’s cap.” Strange, but he seemed to know what he meant.

Once outside, I saw that I hadn’t locked my bike. Given that I was in a ghost town it really didn’t matter. I figured I could leave a thousand Euros in plain site without having to worry about anything but the wind carrying the currency away. I walked my bike and goodies to an expanse of grass kitty corner to the market then sat down to eat and drink. I was shocked by an alarming sound as I drank my water. A tram rushed by me, not eight feet from me. I hadn’t even noticed the tram tracks. When I turned my head to watch it go, I saw that it crossed a funky white bridge that looked like a DNA-helix. Even the bridges had been delivered from other planets. Maybe that’s why no one was around. Aliens from other worlds had settled here. Hell, they may have been the buildings themselves. It was impossible to tell, but it explained the trees growing on what I had interpreted as rooftops. It was just green hair on their heads. Or something else. I knew too little of alien species to do anything but speculate.

I noticed cars crossing the bridge. As I turned to look the other way, I saw people waiting at the tram stop, presumably waiting for a tram heading in the other direction. There were also cyclists riding every-which-way as well as a few scooters. I couldn’t explain the explosion of human activity. My mind wasn’t capable of figuring out how people and their transportation machines could appear out of nowhere so suddenly. This was a very, very strange island, a twilight zone island. I wondered if the strange questions and statements uttered by the market clerk had brought these beings into existence or if there had been some sort of call of attraction. Maybe the aliens had read my thoughts and were trying to trick me into believing they hadn’t manifested as bridges and buildings. I also considered the possibility that I was starring in the Truman Show. This wasn’t the first time I had thought that. This island was weird.

As I ate my orange and drank water, my thoughts shifted. Rehydrating captured my attention. I had taken off my jacket because the afternoon sun was warm and there was only a light breeze. I hoped the weather would remain this pleasant. As I thought that I smiled and said aloud, “That was a ‘normal’ thought. Crazy to think about something I might typically think when I’m not on this island.” Then I realized that thinking that thought was more appropriate in this place. I lied down and looked up at the cloudless blue sky, biting into my apple. I could lie here forever, I thought.

When I finished, I walked the orange peels and apple core to a trash can next to the tram stop. A Goth woman eyed me spectacularly and I wished her a hellish day full of despair. There was no malice in my wish, but I wanted to accommodate the darkness she had chosen as her identity. She reacted to my statement by blinking her eyes and yawning. I turned away, satisfied that she had remained in character. When I returned to my bike, I pulled out my dugout and took a couple puffs. That relaxed my muscles. My legs had tightened from cycling. I drank more water then tried to fit the bottle into the holder. It was too big, so I unlocked my chain and wrapped it around the bottle and the top frame to keep it in place.

Once I put on my jacket, I mounted the bike and rode down the relatively boring street of Ijburglaan. It wasn’t really boring, but the buildings seemed less interesting. The street was exponentially better than the hellish sightscape I had ridden through on the other side of the waterway. I sure as hell wasn’t going to head back that way. I was hoping there would be another way to get off the island. At least I knew where the market was. If I had to turn back, I could at least get food and drink.

I turned a corner far down the street, veering to the west away from the tram line. I saw a basketball court and weird blue building that appeared to be a school. I gathered as much from the tiny bicycles that were parked on the little bike racks. Cute. Things like that changed my mindset. When I turned to look further south, I saw a monstrous structure for power lines, an angular metallic science fiction creature with a winged head. It was so frightening I worried about the safety of the children. I didn’t think, “Oh, no, a power grid so close to the children could be harmful to their health.” No, I thought, “Dear God, if that thing gets loose from its moors it will annihilate all the children, sucking their synapses into the mother ship in order to store their consciousness for feeding during times of electrical droughts.” I needed to get the hell out of there.

After I passed by the school, I found myself on another bizarre street of architecture. I rode down bunches of side streets, in no hurry to get anywhere, turning randomly without reason. I forgot that I was on Earth. I came upon a strange house, two stories, but the roof of the top story was rounded and appeared to be made of peat moss or some type of organic material. There was a small corner window on the first floor, the top of which barely reached my chest. Was it possible that hobbits lived on the island? I peered inside and it seemed that the ceiling was very low. It wasn’t so low that I thought it was the 7½ floor from “Being John Malkovich,” but it was short enough that no Dutch person could live there. A tiny Italian woman, maybe, but the Dutch were too tall to fit inside such a place. No one taller than five feet could be comfortable inside. I was sure burglars were deterred because of this.

It was also strange that there was blue siding wherever there wasn’t peat moss. The door was the same dark blue as the siding. I only noticed it because I had become blue myself. The roof, naturally, was a dull mossy green. On the other side of the hut—I couldn’t in good conscience call it a house any longer—was an outdoor patio with a little picket fence about six feet from the sidewalk. There was an overhanging beige tarp providing shading. I walked up to the patio and saw a simple glass topped table and two black iron chairs with beige cushions on them. They were human-sized. I wondered if they were used when the gnomes invited Dutch guests to visit.

Satisfied that I had explored all possibilities within the hut and that I was no longer blue, I got back on my bike and rode slowly down the street. I rode so slowly that I may as well have walked, but I had to do it because I didn’t want to miss anomalies like the hobbit hut. I came to a stop next to a dark red brick building that resembled an old firehouse, the type that existed in smaller towns in the Midwestern United States in the early part of the twentieth century. I expected the garage door to open to release a galloping team of horses pulling a large-wheeled cylinder filled with water and a crotchety old man winding a crank to sound a whirring alarm. When I turned another corner, I came on a street with only two-story houses. Instead of the wall-to-wall row house style that had been prominent on many streets, here there were ten-foot expanses of cement, brick, and stone used as driveways and patios.

The street came to a “T” and across the way was a three-story house that looked like some type of stone shelter built into the side of a rock-faced cliff. There were strange angles, but a smooth surface. Still, it looked like one large slab of stone … except on the undersized first floor—what was going on with these tiny first floors? The door was dark wood and looked like its height was about five feet. There was a concrete area next to the door that served as a covered garage, a space that looked like it could barely fit a Smart Car. No, this was not the Island of Greatness; it was the Island of Weird.

As I rode to the south, I stopped at a five-story metallic-sided building with windows that were merely long horizontal slits in the middle of floors, but with floor-to-ceiling windows on the corner. The building was long but excessively narrow, to my eyes wide enough for maybe three people to walk side by side without touching the walls on either side. A twin-sized bed would be a tight fit. I couldn’t figure it out. I loved it, though. It was a perfect house for a family of two-dimensional people.

There were so many oddities I couldn’t process them all. Amongst the contemporary architecture was a stone cottage that looked like it belonged within a medieval Bavarian village. I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised to see a man with lederhosen milking a Guernsey in the driveway. A three-story block house sat next to it with a rectangular orange-and-charcoal color pattern and staggered windows with different sizes and shapes ranging from triangles to rhombuses to circles. Nothing made sense and it was the senselessness of the designs that made the most sense. Everything seemed exactly as it should be because none of it was as it should be. I would go so far as to suggest that the architects were challenging the very notions of “should” as it applied to design, a massive “screw you” to architectural morality.

It would be easy to say that the neighborhoods suggested “anything goes,” but that wasn’t true. No two designs existed alongside one another; if they had it might have offended the sensibility of the neighborhood. I wished there were a few side-by-side designs that were the same just to add that much more unpredictability to mess with my mind.

I finally passed underneath a long four-story white apartment building with plenty of glass windows with views over a huge waterway. With no warning, I was free from the neighborhood. Buildings ceased and I turned south to follow a bicycle path parallel to the tram line, crossing a bridge spanning the waterway that the apartments had been overlooking. It was a relatively flat bridge, long, and immediately on the other side, perhaps another island, was a large ten story building that I first thought was for offices but realized was made of condos. It was an attractive building, but it stuck out because there were no other buildings of comparable height or girth nearby.

On my side of the street were long three-story buildings. Nondescript but somehow attractive. On the other side of the road, which was split in the middle by tram tracks, were a more eclectic mix of buildings, many of which housed shops and cafés at street level. I still had my water, so I felt no need to stop. It was getting to be later in the afternoon, and I wanted to find my way to the mainland before it got dark. It was as if sense had returned to me since I had left the Island of Weird.

Soon there were no shops or cafés on either side of the street. Relatively new and modern buildings of various heights and lengths lined either side of the road. The ride was pleasant. I watched cyclists heading the other direction on the bike lane on the other side of the road. It seemed like an assembly line of bicycles. I believed they were on their way to be fed to the Angry Power-Line Creature.

Occasionally, I passed a cyclist and, as often as not, other cyclists passed me. I passed several wide intersections, stooping because of traffic lights. I passed plenty of tram stops as well. This island, if it was an island, was incredibly long. It went as far as I could see no matter how far I rode south. Because I was on the west side of the road, I was in the shade. That was good because I could tell I had a slight sunburn on my face and atop my noggin.

After the longest time, the road finally curved. There was a lot of construction in this area, but the office buildings were freakishly designed. I figured they had escaped from the Island of Weird and were settling in this place. It wouldn’t be long before they proliferated and either annihilated or assimilated the less fantastical architecture. I breathed a bit easier next to the freaks. I realized that I might be more closely related to this breed of alien than I had ever imagined. How else to explain my feelings of belonging among them. The long straightaway had been mind-numbing because of the sameness that had developed over the latter half of the stretch. The sights were not bad in and of themselves, but the absence of striking diversity and mind-bending shapes and colors had dulled my senses.

The road curved again not too much further to the east and then I was in a range of total construction and empty spaces. It was strange to be out of the forest of buildings, but it was nice to be able to see in all directions. The only problem was that there was no bicycle lane. This was a first. This wasn’t a problem for long as I passed by the worst of the construction. There were some tight fits as cars slowly edged around me. Even out on this wild edge of the Amsterdam metro area, cars were sensitive to cyclists. I certainly appreciated that. I figured once the construction was finished there would be bike lanes again.

I encountered a new bicycle lane. The path was made of brick, but there was dirt on either side with construction fences less than a foot away. The lane was wide, though. I figured it was meant for two-way traffic. There didn’t appear to be any development on the other side of the road. Just weeds, brush, and a fence next to a long swath of sandy beach. It was hard to tell whether the beach was a recreational area or not. Maybe a landing zone for architectural oddities from distant galaxies.

I finally rode onto a long bridge that spanned the widest expanse of water I had yet crossed. I was riding southwest toward the mainland. I could see a huge factory to the southwest, but the bridge curved closer to due west. I was riding directly into the sun. Even though I was partially blinded, I could see that on either side of the bridge there were trees. No developments of any sort. It looked almost like countryside until I got closer to what I thought was the end of the bridge only to find that it crossed a few smaller canals.

The road ended at a “T.” Ahead of me was construction for a new road. It was blocked by fences. Shoot. To the north was a road that didn’t stretch too far until running into what looked like a body of water. Probably a dead end. To the south was what looked like an endless stretch of road. At least there was a bicycle lane and little traffic. I rode across the intersection and stopped next to the fence. I unraveled my lock, taking a big drink of water. I pulled out my dugout and took a hit. Stress relieved.

I smiled at the long road ahead and thought I may as well get to it. The pot gave me a little pick-me-up. I crossed back across the intersection to the bike lane and started riding south. I was riding parallel to the road on my right with a canal on my left. There were trees starting to bud and underbrush coming to life across the canal. On the right side of the road was a line of tall thin trees. Once I passed the end of trees on the right I saw a massive colony of metal structures, presumably a power grid. I could hear the humming. I sped up, as if it was possible to outpace evil.

The bike lane ended, and the road narrowed. I decided to go ahead and take it as there were no cars coming from either direction. It would be easy enough for a single car to get around me. I hugged the right-hand side of the road. I didn’t think about it much in the city center, but I was glad the Dutch drove on the right-side of the road. I’m not sure what the Brits had been thinking. Odd that continental Europe had more in common with the United States in terms of rules of the road than England. Whatever. My only concern now was figuring out where this road led. I was beginning to wonder if I would wind up in Utrecht by the following morning. There was still light, though.

The electric-line field was massive and on the left-hand side of the road across the canal were large industrial-looking buildings, dowdy and mean-spirited, probably the power plant. I came to the end of the canal more quickly than I thought I would. I didn’t like riding along next to the massive power lines, but I was soon distracted by a gargantuan parking lot on the right of the road. It looked as big as a suburban parking lot in the United States. Then I saw what was, for me, an oddity: A gas station. Wow.

Seeing the station was disheartening. It cut into the romance of Holland. Ideas of utopia were displaced by reality. As disconcerting as it was, I was glad I had come this way and seen the giant parking lot and gas station. My perception of the country was broadened by doing so. It couldn’t all be seventeenth-century canal houses, Java, and the Island of Weird. What other disappointments did The Netherlands have in store for me?

Once again, there was a bike lane. That lifted my spirits. I crossed a canal and then saw that the road came to a “T.” These three-way stops were killing me. It was a highway, a major highway, the equivalent of a U.S. Interstate. The A1. I saw there was a bus stop and, I thought, “At least I can take a bus, just load my bike onto the rack.” But as I crossed the street to the bus stop, I saw there was a bike lane running along the A1. How about that? I couldn’t believe it. My faith in the Dutch was renewed. I didn’t know of any U.S. Interstates that had bicycle lanes.

There was only one direction that made sense and that was west given how far east I had ridden earlier. I was riding along an access road so the noise wasn’t quite as bad as it could have been. But then the bike lane ended. I was going to have to ride on the access road. Unbelievable. It appeared that the Dutch were no better than America when it came to major highways. If the Dutch couldn’t be gracious enough to provide bike lanes I would ride in the road.

It was two lanes, and they were narrow. There didn’t seem to be much traffic, but if two cars passed by at the same time, they would have little room to pass without nudging me off the road. To make matters worse, there was no shoulder; instead, there was a waist-high concrete barrier edging right up to the right lane. I was going to be riding in a danger zone in a bad action movie. A car-bicycle chase could have developed at any moment.

A flat bridge crossed a wide waterway. As much as it sucked to ride on the noisy road and deal with the few cars that passed me, at least I was guaranteed to cross onto the mainland. I had thought I had been, but it was obvious from the waterway that I wasn’t. Now, perhaps, I was. Not long past the waterway a bike lane appeared. A scooter shot passed me just as I turned onto the bike path. I shifted gears and sped up, not needing to be quite so careful any longer. To my surprise I came upon a couple of bikes and zipped past them. I wanted to get away from the A1 as quickly as I could.

I curled around a clover leaf on-ramp, adding extra distance to my ride. The landscape was boring, especially after being immersed in alien architecture. My mind wandered and I thought of the things I had seen. Had I imagined the whole thing? Those houses couldn’t have been real. No way. I woke from my thoughts when the noise died down due to trees muffling the highway. They also added just a touch of beauty to the ride as the buds were beginning to leaf.

I came upon an underpass that led to the west and away from the A1. That was good because the highway had curved toward the north. It was possible I needed to ride further north, but I wasn’t sure where the A1 went. The possibility of cutting away from the highway was too tempting so I rode through the underpass on a road named Weteringweg. I had no clue where I was, but for the first time in perhaps a half an hour I was excited to see what came next.

I passed under a train line as I kept riding. The two lanes of the road were narrow and once again there was no bicycle lane. There were no buildings around, either. It was quite possible I was not in Amsterdam yet, not even a suburb. There were rows of trees lining the sides of the road and on the right side to the north I saw an orchard. To the south was a green field of grass or maybe hay. Where was I?

The road veered toward the south—not good. Before I got too concerned, I came upon a bike path heading west, one that ran parallel to a new road that had crossed Weteringweg. I was riding through a grassy expanse with trees to my right. On the other side of the road were buildings, a gas station, and a McDonald’s. It was like driving down a strip through Anytown, USA.

Soon enough, though, I followed the bike trail to the northwest parallel to a street called Muiderstraatweg. This was yet another ugly road, however. There were no hideous commercial buildings, but the land on either side of the road was cleared, completely white ground. Massive construction vehicles littered the land, but otherwise nothing of note to see. The road was straight and drab. I was thirsty. I stopped so I could drink my water. “Why didn’t I stop at that McDonald’s?” I slapped my face as soon as I said it. “What is wrong with you?” It was only because I didn’t believe in self-punishment that I didn’t fill my mouth with dirt. I pulled out my dugout and took a puff to get my head straight. “There, now ride.”

Half mindless, the shrooms all but dead, I continued onward without complaint. Everything seemed just about right. The sun was setting, so it wasn’t blinding any more. After I rode through an underpass, civilization opened up. The scene was muted in most respects, but it had a neighborhood-like feel. I saw a café and pulled to a stop. I locked my bike and went to sit at one of the outdoor tables. A friendly young Dutch fellow asked me a question that I couldn’t understand so I blurted out, “Sprechen ze English?” He laughed and said, “Ja, a little.” A relief. “A Floreffe, water, and Gehaktballen.” He nodded and went back inside.

When he came back out with my beer and water, I asked him where I was. He looked at me strangely so I explained my situation as well as I could. “I was in the Island of Strange … no, the Island of Weird … or maybe a bunch of islands.” I stopped and looked up at him. “What was I talking about? Oh, yeah! I’m cycling to the Grachtengordel, but I have no idea where I am. I’m not in Amsterdam, am I?”

I knew right away from his smile that I wasn’t. He looked like he wanted to call everyone from the café over to tell them, “Hey, this stupid American thinks he’s in Amsterdam.” Instead, he told me I was in a suburb called Diemen. “Am I heading the right way?” I could tell from his look I had asked a stupid question. “That way.” He pointed in the direction I had been heading. “Amsterdam is not far.” I thanked him and he went back inside, smiling all the way. I figured he probably saw few foreign idiots while working. For that reason—perhaps only for that reason—he seemed to enjoy my ignorance.

As I drank my beer I completely forgot about him. In fact, I forgot that I was at a café and that I had ordered food. I wasn’t sure what I had been thinking. Nothing, more than likely. When the food appeared in front of me, though, I was astonished. Where had it come from? I hadn’t even seen the server place it there. I was hungry, though, so I ate. When I was finished with the food and drinks, I paid and left. I remembered how difficult it had been to pay earlier in the day at the market. It seemed like an experience that had happened to someone else in another century, a time in the distant future, a different planet.

I unlocked my bike and started riding along the bike path. The road also had tram tracks. I felt relieved; I was definitely in the metro area. Diemen. I would have to remember that name. It was pleasant enough. I liked the style of the apartments next to me on the other side of the sidewalk. Pleasant background in the darkening dusk—and the lights in the windows provided a soothing sense of being somewhere. I flipped the headlight on my bike, so I could see a little better as well.

Eventually I came across a larger intersection and suddenly the environment looked more like Amsterdam—the newer areas on the edges of the city, anyway. I passed a church that wasn’t functioning as a church. A very good sign. Passing a church that still functioned as a church would have worried me. I rode for a long time not noticing what I was passing. Everything seemed nice enough; nothing stuck out as ugly or beautiful. Amicable. A comfy old couch. Even the cyclists that passed me seemed like furniture that I might use later. The night air was becoming crisp, that much I noticed. It felt good. The cool air kept me awake.

I woke up more fully when I crossed through the underpass of the A10. That highway formed a ring around Amsterdam, so I was happy to see it. I was even happier that I didn’t have to ride along it and that the bike lane didn’t end. The road next to the bike lane was called s113. There was heavy traffic and there were trams heading in both directions. I usually hated the wide busy roads, but it was lit up well and because it was straight I knew it was taking me further west. I surmised that I was on the far east side of Amsterdam. I wished it was lighter so I could really see what it looked like.

The view was becoming more attractive the farther I rode as the streetlights came on. There were a lot more trees and the lighting was gentle, atmospheric. I felt myself becoming more refined along with the environment around me. Whatever angst or disgust I felt within was slowly seeping through my pores and the greening trees seemed to absorb the stench. I could only change myself so much without the external environment changing, too.

I rode by an incredibly long park. If it had been summer, I doubt I would have known it was a park. The trees across the road were densely packed, but I could see through them since they had few leaves. The park went on and on. This area was darker because of the park and the recreational grounds on my side of the street. After I passed the park, I just kept going and going … and going. It was the straightest damn street I had ridden along in Amsterdam. What was most interesting was how gradually I was cycling through decades. I was on a spatial tour of time as told by architecture. It was a linear journey, starting from the present and descending into the past with every older decade more beautiful than the previous.

It was 2008 and there was advanced technology everywhere, but for some unfathomable reason the latter half of the twentieth century was filled with the ugliest architecture in the history of Western civilization. It sure looked that way to me. There were nuggets of brilliance beginning to shine through again this decade as I saw on the Island of Weird, but I had passed a large stretch of late twentieth-century design not far behind me and it did not speak well of the century that was still visible in the rearview mirror. What had the Western world been thinking the previous fifty years? Definitely not aesthetics, that was sure.

I was grateful to be passing through a nineteenth-century neighborhood. What a difference it made. As nice as the park was, this was so much better. I was beginning to feel like I belonged instead of that lost sufferer who floundered past the soul-crushing twentieth-century strip of McDonald’s and Big Oil gas stations.

It kept getting better, more beautiful. The architecture changed so much in so many different ways I couldn’t keep track of it. I was awake again, though. A second wind. I felt like I had just landed in Amsterdam after spending a thousand years outside an Arby’s in Amarillo, Texas, wearing a ten-gallon hat while spitting chaw on my snakeskin boots. I was in the middle of my own private Amsterdam with shops and cafés and five-story gabled buildings and other architectural marvels dating back to the eighteenth century. I had to be getting close to somewhere I knew, but what thrilled me was that I had never known this area to the east existed. Marvelous.

I finally saw something I recognized: Oosterpark! I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t made a single turn after leaving the café and yet here I was. So, s113 ran by Oosterpark. Another important point to remember. How many miles had I cycled? Soon enough I was cycling by Natura Artis Magistra, the zoo. I was a stone’s throw from Bloem, but whatever adrenaline I’d had running through me had run dry. Exhausted, I rode across the Blauwbrug, south along the Amstel, and turned onto Kerkstraat, parking my bike, locking it, and walking up to my apartment. I drank a few glasses of water and stumbled to bed before passing out.